Page 1 of Tempting Fate
Chapter 1
“That girl has some nerve showing up in this town after all the trouble she’s caused.”
“I was surprised Logan and Annie even invited her to the wedding.”
Raylene Rosser huddled behind a display of canned goods, trying to make herself as small as possible while eavesdropping. She recognized Donna Thurston’s voice. The Bun Boy owner always was a sanctimonious bitch. But Raylene expected better from Ethel. She’d known her since before she could walk. Donna, too.
Then again, it would’ve been foolish to think she’d be welcomed back to Nugget with open arms. She hadn’t exactly left on the best of terms. Nope, instead of burning bridges, she’d blown them up with a hand grenade.
That’s okay. As soon as Logan and Annie tied the knot, and Raylene found what she was looking for and sold the last of her inheritance, a prime piece of Nugget real estate, she’d get in her truck and leave this dusty, godforsaken town. Forever. Let Logan carry on the Rosser legacy—such as it was. She had places to go and people to meet. Without Butch, the worst husband in the annals of bad husbands, she was free to roam. Free to do whatever the hell she wanted. And if it all worked out, she could dig herself out of the mess she’d buried herself in. But for right now, she wanted to be with Logan on the most important day of his life.
Funny, that. Last summer, she’d hated him on sight. Her daddy’s secret love child. But then Logan Jenkins swooped in and helped her clean up her train wreck of an existence and they connected like only blood can. And Annie…the woman was a saint. Earth mother rolled in sugar and spice and everything nice. And the best part: she accepted Raylene, warts and all. No judgment.
So no way was Raylene missing their wedding, even if the town busybodies wanted to burn her at the stake. She strained to hear if Donna and Ethel were still talking about her. Apparently neither of them knew she was in the store. Or perhaps they didn’t care.
“Who are you hiding from?”
Raylene jumped at the voice, a deep baritone with more than a hint of New Jersey. A voice that irritated the hell out of her. She whipped her head around and put her finger over her lips. “Shush.”
Gabe Moretti leaned against the spaghetti sauce shelf, a six-pack in one hand and a bag of Ruffles in the other, a smile playing on his lips. “You can run, Ray, but you can’t hide.”
“Don’t call me that.” It was her father’s name, and Ray Rosser had been a mean son of a bitch. Probably still was, even six feet under. “Now go away.”
He didn’t budge, just continued to stand there, all two hundred and twenty pounds of him. The man was a brick house who moved like a freaking ghost. The way he’d snuck up on her…well, she was lucky he hadn’t given her a heart attack.
“Don’t pay attention to them,” Gabe said. “Small town, small minds.”
The truth was she deserved every ounce of their venom, and more. That was what was so hard about being here. Every day was like looking in a mirror and seeing something you didn’t like staring back. At least in LA, no one knew her and she could be anyone she wanted, even if it meant living on ramen and letting out rooms in her beach rental.
“I thought you liked it here,” she said.
“Love it.” He jabbed the bag of potato chips at the front of the store. “Love those two old biddies, but they don’t know you like I do, Ray.”
“You’ve met me exactly twice.” Three times, if she counted now. “Neither time did we say more than three words to each other.” The first time, he and Logan had come to Denver to help her get away from Butch. The second time was yesterday, at a small, pre-wedding gathering at Logan and Annie’s place.
“Yep.” He winked. “But both times I made a lasting impression on you.” His lips ticked up in an arrogant grin. If he weren’t her brother’s best friend and business partner, she’d wipe that smirk off his face. “Are you planning to stay in canned goods your whole life?”
She pretended to study the various brands of tomato paste. “Annie asked me to pick up a few things for the party tonight. I’m trying to decide which one is best.”
“Annie cans her own tomatoes.” He lifted his brows in challenge, then slid a glance at her empty basket. “Coward.”
“I am not.” She stuck her chin out with false bravado, because shewasa coward. The worst kind of coward. “They can all go to hell.”
“Isn’t that the kind of attitude that got you labeled the wicked witch of the west in the first place? Why don’t you just go out there, smile, and say, ‘Fine afternoon’? It’s called diplomacy.”
“They teach you that in SEAL school?”
“It’s BUD/S, not SEAL school.” He pushed himself away from the shelf.
She noted that he had on a stupid straw cowboy hat and a pair of pointy boots. Gabe Moretti was as much a cowboy as she was Snooki fromJersey Shore. “It’s after Labor Day, by the way.” She nudged her head at his hat.
“Yeah, so?”
“Felt in the winter; straw comes out Memorial Day. You want people around here to laugh at you?”
“People around here love me, sweetheart. You, not so much.”
He had a point, at least about her. She had no clue how the people of Nugget responded to Gabe. According to Annie, they loved Logan. He’d gotten the good Rosser genes—if there were any. Or maybe he just took after his mom, a woman Raylene had never met. Soon she would, when Maisy got here for the wedding. The whole thing would be very strange. Meeting the other woman, the one who’d been her father’s mistress right under Raylene’s mother’s nose.
